[2] Set in pre-war Germany, it shows how John Halder, a liberal-minded professor whose best friend is the Jewish Maurice, could not only be seduced into joining the Nazis, but step-by-rationalised-step end up embracing the Final Solution, justifying to his conscience the terrible actions involved.

Cecil P. Taylor, in tracing his hero's progress over eight years towards the upper echelons of the SS, plausibly explains the private flaws that lead to endorsement of public monstrosity.

Beneath Halder's surface 'goodness' lies a chilling moral detachment: he can abandon his distracted wife for a devoted student, he has written a pro-euthanasia novel and shortly afterwards gives ideas on euthanatizing people without the consent of anyone involved (the people aren’t supposed to know they’re dying and their families are never even told about it), he hears in his head a continuous musical score that helps blot out daily reality.

Taylor's point is that Nazism preyed on individual character flaws and on a missing moral dimension in otherwise educated and intelligent people.

[4] At the end Halder not only becomes a member of the Nazi party but also plays a direct role in SS book burnings, in euthanasia experiments, in the night of the Broken Glass, and, finally, in Adolf Eichmann's genocide at Auschwitz, where Maurice, the sole source of a Jewish perspective in the play and original force of "good" in Halder, ends up being deported.

[3] Historical moments referred to in the play are included: Good was originally commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company and premiered on 9 September 1981 at the Donmar Warehouse in Covent Garden, London.

[17] Reviewing the Broadway production, Frank Rich of The New York Times wrote that "Good is an undeniably provocative work, and Mr. Taylor, who died last year at the age of 53, has written it with an intelligent, light touch in a most imaginative form.

But for all the author's efforts to break through our received ideas about the origins of Nazism and to avoid black and white moral imperatives, his play doesn't add anything to the generalities of the past.

Like too many Nazi criminals before him, the protagonist of Good has eluded his erstwhile prosecutors and stolen into the night, the dark secrets of his soul intact.

"[19] A film adaptation of the play, featuring Viggo Mortensen as John Halder and directed by Vicente Amorim, was released in December 2008.